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OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen threatened from the beginning of this year’s legislative session that he would call lawmakers back for a special session if they failed to pass a bill to significantly ease soaring property taxes. On the last day of the 60-day session Thursday, some lawmakers who helped torpedo an already anemic tax-shifting bill said they would welcome Pillen’s special session. “We’re not going to fix this bill today,” said Omaha Sen. Megan Hunt, the lone independent in Nebraska’s unique one-chamber, officially nonpartisan Legislature. “The time we’re going to fix this is going to be in a special session where we start from scratch.” Pillen followed through in his address to lawmakers just hours before they adjourned the session without taking a vote on the property tax relief bill he backed, saying he planned to issue a proclamation for a special session. “I will call as many sessions as it takes to finish the long overdue work of solving our property tax crisis,” he said. Nebraska law requires that a special session can be no shorter than seven days and that actions considered must be limited to the subjects outlined in the governor’s proclamation. Pillen has in recent weeks said he would also consider a special session to change the way Nebraska allots its Electoral College votes to a winner-take-all system. Currently, Nebraska splits its presidential electoral votes based on the popular vote within its three congressional districts. Maine is the only other state to split its electoral votes. Republicans want the switch ahead of this year’s hotly contested presidential election to ensure an electoral vote tied to Nebraska’s Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District doesn’t go to President Joe Biden, as it did in 2020. Pillen has said he’ll include the winner-take-all issue in a special session call if there are enough votes to get it beyond a filibuster, which takes 33 votes. While Republicans currently hold 33 seats, not all of them are willing to toss out Nebraska’s split system, so Pillen remains focused on passing property tax relief. He had backed a bill that initially sought to raise the state’s sales tax to 6.5%, which would have been among the highest in the country. It also expanded the sales tax base to items like candy, soda, pet grooming and veterinary services and digital advertising and included some caps on spending by local governments. The measure squeaked through the first two rounds of debate, garnering just enough votes to overcome a filibuster. But by the time it reached the third and last round on the final day of the session, the sales tax increase had been stripped away, leaving just a fraction of the property tax savings originally sought. The bill was key to Pillen’s plan to slash soaring property taxes. Just days into the session, Pillen called for a 40% reduction that would cut $2 billion from the $5.3 billion in property taxes collected in 2023. That property tax revenue compares to $3.4 billion collected just 10 years earlier, and is far more than the collections from sales and income tax, which brought in about $2.3 billion and $3 billion respectively in 2023. Soaring housing and land prices in recent years have led to ballooning property tax bills for homeowners and farmers, but some homeowners have been hit especially hard, as state law requires residential property to be assessed at nearly 100% of market value, compared to 75% for agricultural land. The skyrocketing costs are keeping a new generation from being able to afford homeownership, Pillen said. It’s also forcing some elderly residents on fixed incomes out of homes they’ve already paid off because they can’t afford the ever-rising tax bill, he said. But the array of proposed sales tax increases was enough to find opponents in both liberals, who complained that it put too much of the tax burden on those least able to afford it, and conservatives, who called for more reductions in spending over new taxes. Democratic Sen. Danielle Conrad labeled the bill “one of the largest tax increases in Nebraska history,” drawing protest from the bill’s main sponsor, Republican Sen. Lou Ann Linehan. who defended it as a tax shift to a wider base of taxpayers. “It’s easy to say, ‘No, no, no,’” she said. “So everybody who’s saying we can do better, I hope you have those ideas to the Revenue Committee by the end of June.” If Pillen follows through with the special session, Nebraska would join several other states that have done so or are expected to later this year. On Wednesday, Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin and the state’s General Assembly reached a budget agreement that will require a special session in May. On the same day, New Mexico’s Democratic governor announced a mid-summer special legislative session on public safety initiatives. In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves called two special sessions in January during the regular legislative session for lawmakers to consider incentives for economic development projects. And in Louisiana, the Republican-dominated legislature passed a slew of tough-on-crime policies during a two-week special session in February that included expanding death row execution methods, charging 17-year-olds as adults and eliminating parole for most people who are jailed in the future. Nebraska’s last special session took place in September 2021, when then-Gov. Pete Ricketts summoned lawmakers to redraw the state’s political boundaries. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

BRENTWOOD, N.H. (AP) — A man who says he was beaten and raped as a teen at New Hampshire’s youth detention center testified Friday that he both tried to take his own life and plotted to kill his abusers years later before speaking up. David Meehan, who spent three years at the Youth Development Center in the late 1990s, went to police in 2017 and sued the state three years later. Testifying for a third day in his civil trial, he described his life’s downward spiral after leaving the facility, including a burglary committed to feed a heroin addiction and multiple suicide attempts. He said he stopped using drugs after a 2012 jail stint but was barely functioning when he woke up from hernia surgery in 2017, overwhelmed with memories of his abuse. “I go home, I heal up a little bit, and the moment I know I’m stronger, I walk out on my wife and my kids,” he said. “Because this time, I really think I’m capable of taking the life of Jeff Buskey.” Buskey and 10 other former state workers have pleaded not guilty to charges of sexually assaulting or acting as accomplices to the assault of Meehan and other former residents. Meehan, who alleges in his lawsuit that he endured near-daily assaults, testified that he tracked down his alleged abusers more than a decade later and even bought a gun with the intent to kill Buskey, but threw it in a river and confided in his wife instead. “That’s not who I am,” he said. “I’m not going to be what they thought they could turn me into. I’m not going to take another life because of what they did.” Meehan’s wife took him to a hospital, where he was referred to police. That sparked an unprecedented criminal investigation into the Manchester facility, now called the Sununu Youth Services Center. But at the same time as it prosecutes former workers, the state also is defending itself against more than 1,100 lawsuits filed by former residents alleging that its negligence allowed abuse to occur. One group of state lawyers will be relying on the testimony of former residents in the criminal trials while others seek to discredit them in the civil cases, an unusual dynamic that played out as Meehan faced cross-examination Friday. “You were an angry and violent young man, weren’t you?” asked Attorney Martha Gaythwaite, who showed jurors a report concluding that Meehan falsely accused his parents of physical abuse when they tried to enforce rules. Meehan disagreed. Earlier, he testified that his mother attacked him and burned him with cigarettes. Gaythwaite also pressed Meehan on his disciplinary record at the youth center, including a time a boy he punched fell and split his head open. According to the center’s internal reports, Meehan later planned to take that boy hostage with a stolen screwdriver as part of an escape attempt. “It’s fair to say someone who had already been the victim of one of your vicious assaults might not be too enthusiastic about being held hostage by you as part of an AWOL attempt, correct?” she asked. Meehan has said that the escape plan occurred at a time when Buskey was raping him every day, while another staffer assaulted him roughly twice a week. The abuse became more violent when he began fighting back, Meehan said. And though he later was submissive, “It never became easier,” he said. “Every one of these takes a little piece of me to the point when they’re done, there’s really not much left of David anymore,” he said. Meehan also testified that he spent weeks locked in his room for 23 hours a day, hidden from view while his injuries healed. Under questioning from Gaythwaite, Meehan reviewed a report in which an ombudsman said he saw no signs of injuries, however. Meehan, who suggested the investigator lied, said his few attempts to get help were rebuffed. When he told a house leader that he had been raped, the staffer, who is now facing criminal charges, told him: “That doesn’t happen here, little fella.” Asked whether he ever filed a written complaint, he referred to instructions on the complaint forms that said residents were to bring all issues to their counselors. “What am I going to do, write ‘Jeff Buskey is making me have sex with him,’ and hand it to Jeff Buskey?” he said. The trial resumes Monday. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

An attorney asked a federal appeals court on Friday to block a controversial Florida law signed last year that restricts Chinese citizens from buying real estate in much of the state, calling it discriminatory and a violation of the federal government’s supremacy in deciding foreign affairs. Attorney Ashley Gorski, representing four Chinese nationals who live in the state, told a three-judge panel from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that “Florida is unlawfully restricting housing for Chinese people.” The law bars Chinese nationals and citizens from other countries that Florida sees as a threat from buying property near military installations and other “critical infrastructure.” She compared it to long-overturned laws from the early 20th century that barred Chinese from buying property. “It is singling out people from particular countries in a way that is anathema to the equal protection guarantees that now exist,” Gorski told the court. But Nathan Forrester, the attorney representing the state, told judges Charles Wilson, Robert Luck and Barbara Lagoa that the law lines up with the Biden administration’s national security concerns, including threats posed by the Chinese government. “It is not about race,” Forrester said. “The concern is about the Chinese government, and that is what this law is designed to do. The concern is the manipulation of the Chinese government.” This case comes nearly a year after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the law, which prohibits citizens of China and some other countries from purchasing property in large swaths of Florida. It applies to properties within 10 miles (16 kilometers) of military installations and other critical infrastructure. The law also applies to agricultural land. At the time, DeSantis called China the country’s “greatest geopolitical threat” and said the law was taking a stand against the Chinese Communist Party, a frequent target in his failed attempt to land the Republican presidential nomination. The law also affects citizens of Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia and North Korea. However, Chinese citizens and anybody selling property to them face the harshest penalties. Luck and Lagoa both served on the Florida Supreme Court in 2019 after being appointed by DeSantis. Later that year, Luck and Lagoa were appointed to the federal court by then-President Donald Trump. Wilson was appointed to the court in 1999 by then-President Bill Clinton. Throughout the arguments, Luck expressed skepticism of whether Gorski’s clients had standing to bring the lawsuit, asking how they specifically had been harmed. Gorski replied that the law prevents Chinese citizens from getting home mortgages in Florida and that it declares “some kind of economic war” against China. She said it could have significant foreign policy implications. “Congress vested only the president with the authority to prohibit a transaction because it is a major decision with significant foreign policy implications,” she said. But Luck pushed back, saying the state used U.S. policy as its guidepost in drafting the law. “Florida took it from what the federal was doing and piggybacked,” he said. Forrester noted that the Biden administration didn’t file a brief in support of Gorski’s clients. Wilson pointed out that Florida has nearly two dozen military bases and that “critical infrastructure” is a broad term. He asked Forrester whether those restrictions would leave any place in Florida that someone from the barred countries could buy property. Forrester said maps were still being prepared. In the original complaint filed to the Tallahassee district court last May, the attorneys representing Yifan Shen, Zhiming Xu, Xinxi Wang and Yongxin Liu argued the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection and due process clauses by casting “a cloud of suspicion over anyone of Chinese descent who seeks to buy property in Florida.” But U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor, a Trump appointee, refused to block the law, saying the Chinese nationals had not proved the Legislature was motivated by an “unlawful animus” based on race. ___ Associated Press writer Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

LEBANON, Ind. (AP) — A central Indiana man who won a primary election for a township board position while charged with killing his estranged wife has been found guilty of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter. A Boone County jury convicted Andrew Wilhoite, 41, of Lebanon on Thursday, local news outlets reported. Wilhoite was charged with murder in the death of his wife, 41-year-old Elizabeth “Nikki” Wilhoite, who was reported missing by coworkers on March 25, 2022, when she did not show up for work. Her body was found in a creek near her home the next day. She had filed for divorce on March 17 and had recently finished chemotherapy treatments for cancer. Wilhoite told police he struck his wife with a flowerpot during an argument, then dumped her body in the creek. He faces 10 to 30 years in prison when he is sentenced on June 4. One of his attorneys, Jennifer Lukemeyer, said she had no comment on the verdict. Wilhoite was one of three Republican candidates who advanced in a 2022 primary for a township board position before later withdrawing from the race. He received 60 of the 276 total votes for Republicans for three positions on the Clinton Township Board, Boone County election results showed. The race drew only three candidates. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas’ Democratic governor on Friday vetoed proposed tax breaks for anti-abortion counseling centers while allowing restrictions on college diversity initiatives approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature to become law without her signature. Gov. Laura Kelly also vetoed a bill with bipartisan support to increase the penalties for killing a law enforcement dog or horse, a move that the GOP leader who pushed it called “political pettiness.” In addition, she rejected two elections measures fueled at least in part by the influence of people promoting baseless election conspiracies among Republicans. Kelly’s action on the bill dealing with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives stood out because it broke with her vetoes last year of anti-DEI measure from the current state budget. The new law, taking effect July 1, prohibits state universities, community colleges and technical schools from requiring prospective students or applicants for jobs or promotions to make statements on their views about diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Kelly let it become law only two days after the state’s higher education board adopted its own, narrower ban on the same practices. “While I have concerns about this legislation, I don’t believe that the conduct targeted in this legislation occurs in our universities,” Kelly said in her veto message, contradicting statements made by GOP legislators. Legislators are scheduled to return Thursday from a spring break and wrap up their work for the year in six days. Top Republicans immediately pledged to try to override Friday’s vetoes. Republicans in at least 20 states have sought to limit DEI initiatives, arguing that they are discriminatory and enforce a liberal political orthodoxy. Alabama and Utah enacted new anti-DEI laws this year, and a ban enacted in Texas last year has led to more than 100 job cuts on University of Texas campuses. The new policy from the Kansas Board of Regents applies only to state universities and does not specify any penalties, while the new law will allow a fine of up to $10,000 for each violation. Backers of DEI programs say they are being misrepresented. The American Psychological Association defines diversity, equity and inclusion as a framework to guide “fair treatment and full participation of all people,” especially those in minority groups. “We need to move forward and focus our efforts on making college more affordable and providing students from all backgrounds with the tools they need to succeed,” Kelly said in her message on the bill. With the bill helping the state’s nearly 60 anti-abortion centers, Kelly’s veto was expected because she is a strong supporter of abortion rights. She already has vetoed two other measures championed by abortion opponents this year. But GOP lawmakers in Kansas have had increasing success in overriding Kelly’s actions. Republican leaders appear to have the two-thirds majorities necessary in both chambers on abortion issues and appeared close on the DEI bill. The latest abortion measure would exempt anti-abortion centers that provide free services to prospective mothers and new parents from paying the state’s 6.5% sales tax on what they buy and give donors to them income tax credits totaling up to $10 million a year. Kelly said in her veto message that it is not appropriate for the state to “divert taxpayer dollars to largely unregulated crisis pregnancy centers.” The bill also includes provisions designed to financially help parents who adopt or want to adopt children. “Governor Kelly has shown once again that her only allegiance is to the profit-driven abortion industry, and not to vulnerable Kansas women, children, and families,” Jeanne Gawdun, a lobbyist for Kansans for Life, the state’s most influential anti-abortion group, said in a statement. Abortion opponents in Kansas are blocked from pursuing the same kind of severe restrictions or bans on abortion imposed in neighboring states, including Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. A Kansas Supreme Court decision in 2019 declared that access to abortion is a fundamental right under the state constitution, and a statewide vote in August 2022 decisively affirmed that position. “This bill goes against the wishes of Kansans,” Kelly said in her veto message. Kelly also has clashed repeatedly with Republicans on voting rights issues. One of the election bills she vetoed would stop giving voters an extra three days after Election Day to return mail ballots to election officials. Many Republicans said they are responding to concerns — fueled by lies from ex-President Donald Trump — about the integrity of election results if ballots are accepted after Election Day. The other elections bill would prohibit state agencies and local officials from using federal funds in administering elections or promoting voting without the Legislature’s express permission. Republicans see spending by the Biden administration as an attempt to improperly boost Democratic turnout. But Kelly chided lawmakers for “focusing on problems that do not exist.” “I would urge the Legislature to focus on real issues impacting Kansans,” Kelly said in her veto message on the second bill. The veto of the bill on police dogs was perhaps Kelly’s most surprising action. Increased penalties have had bipartisan support across the U.S., and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis this week signed a measure this week. The Kansas measure was inspired by the November death of Bane, an 8-year-old Wichita police dog, who authorities say was strangled by a suspect in a domestic violence case. It would allow a first-time offender to be sentenced to up to five years and fined up to $10,000. Kelly said the issue needed more study, saying the new penalties for killing a police dog would be out of line with other, more severe crimes, “without justification.” But House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican and the bill’s biggest champion, said: “This veto is a slap in the face of all law enforcement.” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com